‘I wouldnt want to change that for the world’: This is what it’s like playing elite sport with ADHD
Related Story: Athletes given helping hand managing the game of life Related Story: 'You're in utter darkness': Former athletes on life after elite sport
It was in year 8 that Heath Shaw started to think he was maybe a little different.
There was the time he sprayed deodorant on the bottom of his shoe and set it alight. In his attempts to stamp out the flame, he ended up setting the carpet on fire.
He found it hard to concentrate in class. Lessons were passing him by.
The boy who would go on to win an AFL premiership with Collingwood and play 282 games as an elite defender for 15 years with the Pies and Greater Western Sydney Giants, lacked focus.
Then an explanation came in the form of a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, or ADHD. It unlocked an understanding of what was happening in his childhood and later helped him forge a successful playing career as an adult.
"I have ADHD and I like playing football. I like the competitive nature, I like the challenges throughout that sport. When I have that mindset about something, I go a hundred miles an hour," Shaw says.
"If you've got ADHD and there's something that you love, you're going to give it your all."
Three-time Olympian and former rowing world champion Gearoid Towey also has ADHD and expresses a similar sentiment.
"If you don't have any interest in it, it's a nightmare. You have to have an interest in it and you will do it to death," Towey says.
Both athletes believe ADHD played a key role in their success.
"I love the things about ADHD that make me who I am," Towey says.
'I want this in my life'
Sports psychologist Caroline Anderson describes ADHD as a neuro-behavioural condition.
Around 350,000 Australian kids — 11 per cent — are thought to have ADHD. It can be a debilitating and difficult condition to manage for children, parents and schools.
"There's an inattention component and a hyperactivity and impulsivity component," Dr Anderson says.
"Children who have ADHD are classically easily distracted, they have difficulty sustaining attention.
"They're on the go, can't sit still, they're quite fidgetty."
Unlike Shaw, Towey was not diagnosed young.
Managing his way through the world with yet-to-be-identified ADHD was a question of trial and error until he found his psychological "safe space": rowing, a sport he became instantly obsessed with.
"[As a kid] I read every book, every magazine," Towey says.
"Rowing Magazine came out once a month and I read everything, including the ads.
"And that had a good impact on my school work because my parents said: 'If you can't study you can't row.'"
Towey says the upside of life with ADHD is greater than the down.
"I want this in my life, yeah," he says.
"It's the fearlessness and I guess I'm always chasing some kind of excitement.
"I don't see anything is insurmountable and I genuinely believe that."
'Real world' versus 'sporting world'
Anderson says it is not surprising that people with ADHD can be attracted to playing sport.
"There are many benefits: they thrive in that loud chaotic environment, they tend to be risk-takers because they're impulsive — they're going to take risks, which I think is fantastic in sport."
That describes Shaw — the man who famously came from nowhere to smother a certain goal to help Collingwood win the 2010 grand final — to a tee.
External Link: Heath Shaw smothers Nick Riewoldt mid-kick in the 2010 AFL grand final
"Footballers are very, very instinctive," Shaw says.
"And that sort of ADHD thing, you've gotta make a split-second decision and go with it and sometimes you can't think about the consequences, you've just got to do it.
"Around the ADD and the hyperactivity, the competitive nature … definitely it's been a benefit for me."
Shaw says the structure of a professional football club has also been good for him.
"[When] you've got ADD you can go on tangents left, right and centre," he says.
"But if you have a routine and guidelines around what you need to do to get better, then that helps … and actually makes you better."
Towey agrees.
"It's that outlier thing. They weren't getting on at school because they were just giddy all the time. But on the sports field, they were killing it," he says.
"So, they're like, 'OK, this is my psychological home now'. It's their form of expression."
And an example of how various personality types can excel in elite sport.
"The sporting world and the real world are two very different places," Towey says.
"Sport creates an environment — it's like a microcosm that's not real. There's no law.
"Sport's got its own set of rules and it tolerates pretty outlandish behaviour that doesn't fit in the real world."
Traits like selfishness, aggression and obsessiveness, which can be a hindrance in "the real world", become a benefit, Towey says.
"If you don't have those characteristics, you're probably not going to succeed," he says.
"You're not going to make it if you don't put yourself first most of the time."
Anderson has a slightly different take.
"I think sport is a magnified version of the real world and not everyone can cope under those pressures. So, yes it does take certain personality types and certain strengths of character to operate at the elite level," she says.
"Athletes come from all walks of life. We have introverts who are great athletes, we have athletes who suffer from social anxiety, we have those real external-focused athletes, who thrive on being the centre of attention.
"I think the common determinants are about figuring out ways of psychologically managing pressure and stress."
Managing life after sport
It was Towey's experience with managing those challenges in his life after sport that, in part, prompted him to set up the athletes' support group Crossing the Lines.
The organisation aims to help athletes cope with the ending of their elite sporting careers.
"When the sport gets taken away, the brain gets scrambled again and that's where a lot of people come unstuck," he says.
"It can be very disabling for an adult who has been very capable in one area, but they go back to being a lost kid."
Towey says this is one explanation as to why so many athletes suffer mental health problems when they retire.
"You seek dopamine in a lot of unhealthy ways like alcohol or drugs," he says.
This is something that Shaw is acutely aware of as he prepares for what he says could be his last year of football.
"The downtime for someone with ADD is the most dangerous time, and the time that I worry about is life after football," he says.
"If I have a couple of months off and I'm trying to figure what I'm doing next; that sort of indecision on what to do and not having someone tell you what to do.
"It's a bit scary.
"[But] that is something that has built my character … and the player who I am.
"I wouldn't want to change that for the world."
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